Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1) - Ann Leckie Page 0,39

and awkward. I knew of nothing that might relieve her distress. “Do you know any songs?” I asked her.

She blinked, startled. “I’m not a singer,” she said.

It might have been a language issue. I hadn’t paid much attention to customs in this part of this world, but I was fairly sure there was no division between songs anyone might sing and songs that were, usually for religious reasons, only sung by specialists—not in the cities near the equator. Maybe it was different this far south. “Excuse me,” I said, “I must have used the wrong word. What do you call it when you’re working or playing, or trying to get a baby to sleep? Or just…”

“Oh!” Comprehension animated her, for just a moment. “You mean songs!”

I smiled encouragingly, but she lapsed into silence again. “Try not to worry too much,” I said. “The doctor is very good at what she does. And sometimes you just have to leave things to the gods.”

She curled her lower lip inward and bit it. “I don’t believe in any god,” she said, with a slight vehemence.

“Still. Things will happen as they happen.” She gestured agreement, perfunctory. “Do you play counters?” I asked. Maybe she could show me the game Strigan’s board was meant for, though I doubted it was from Nilt.

“No.” And with that, I had exhausted what small means I might have had to amuse or distract her.

After ten minutes of silence she said, “I have a Tiktik set.”

“What’s Tiktik?”

Her eyes widened, round in her round, pale face. “How can you not know what Tiktik is? You must be from very far away!” I acknowledged that I was, and she answered, “It’s a game. It’s mostly a game for children.” Her tone implied she wasn’t a child, but I’d best not ask why she was carrying a child’s game set. “You’ve really never played Tiktik?”

“Never. Where I come from we mostly play counters, and cards, and dice. But even those are different, in different places.”

She pondered that a moment. “I can teach you,” she said finally. “It’s easy.”

Two hours later, as I was tossing my handful of tiny bov-bone dice, the visitor alarm sounded. The girl looked up, startled. “Someone’s here,” I said. The door to the infirmary stayed shut, Strigan paying no attention.

“Mama,” the girl suggested, hope and relief lending the tiniest tremble to her voice.

“I hope so. I hope it’s not another patient.” Immediately I realized I shouldn’t have suggested it. “I’ll go see.”

It was Mama, unquestionably. She jumped out of the flier she had arrived in, and made for the house with a speed I wouldn’t have thought possible over the snow. She strode past me without acknowledging my existence in any way, tall for a Nilter and broad, as they all were, bundled in coats, the signs of her relationship to the girl inside clear in the lines of her face. I followed her in.

On seeing the girl, now standing by the abandoned Tiktik board, she said, “Well, then, what?”

A Radchaai parent would have put her arms around her daughter, kissed her, told her how relieved she was her daughter was well, maybe even would have wept. Some Radchaai would have thought this parent cold and affectionless. But I was sure that would have been a mistake. They sat down together on a bench, sides touching, as the girl gave her report, what she knew of the patient’s condition, and what had happened out in the snow with the herd, and the ice devil. When she had finished, her mother patted her twice on the knee, briskly, and it was as though she were suddenly a different girl, taller, stronger, now she had, it seemed, not only her mother’s strong, comforting presence, but her approval.

I brought them two cups of fermented milk, and Mama’s attention snapped to me, but not, I thought, because I was of any interest in particular. “You’re not the doctor,” she said, bare statement. I could see her attention was still on her daughter; her interest in me stretched only as far as I might be a threat or a help.

“I’m a guest here,” I told her. “But the doctor is busy, and I thought you might like something to drink.”

Her eyes went to Seivarden, still sleeping, as she had for the last several hours, that black, trembling corrective spread across her forehead, the remains of bruising around her mouth and nose.

“She’s from very far away,” said the girl. “She didn’t know how to play